Edgar Franklin Wittmackwas an illustrator and cover artist for many
of the most popular magazines of the 1920s and 1930s. His covers, just as
the artwork of his contemporary, Norman Rockwell, were usually created as
oil paintings.

Both cover artists specialized in
fiction-oriented magazines. Rockwell, drawing on the viewer's imagination,
created humorous or unique situations of small town life, mainly thru his
covers for the "Saturday Evening Post". Wittmack, known for creating
numerous covers for such "slick" magazines as the "Saturday Evening Post",
"American Boy", "Outdoor Life"', "Liberty" etc., generally displayed a
"poster style" cover of men of all ages at their work or sport. Wittmack is
also well known for his "Popular Science" artwork where, during the height
of the great depression, he painted more than 100+ covers, expressing thru
his "retro-futuristic" depictions, the conversion of many of the ideas of
inventive Americans into visual reality.

When one analyzes the entire output
of Wittmack's work, one discovers that pulp magazines were a mainstay for
his creativity, in that the medium allowed him to express his ability to
tell a story thru his art. His pulp creations were painted for his entire
career, with over 250+ verified covers known. When one analyzes all of
Wittmack's known pulp covers, one discovers that there were mainly four
publishers that used his art frequently, as listed below:

Ridgeway Co.: Wittmack's first pulp
cover was for "Adventure" magazine in 1919, and he continued with them often
thru the end of the depression. Other minor specialty covers painted for
Ridgeway by Wittmack included "Romance" and "Everybody's Magazine".

Frank A. Munsey Co.: Wittmack
created a group of covers for "Argosy All-Story Weekly" during the last half
of the 1920's.

Doubleday Page thru Short Story Inc.:
Wittmack painted most of his pulp covers for "Short Story" magazine, a long
lasting title which spanned his entire career. His first "Short Story" pulp
was published in 1921 and, after more than 150+ covers, his involvement with
the magazine finally came to an end with his last issue being in 1951. This
time period is often considered one of the signaling points in the demise of
the popularity of pulps, mainly due to the appearance of paperbacks and, of
course, television. Other minor specialty pulps for the current publisher
at that time painted by Wittmack included "West", "Frontier Stories", and
"Star" magazines.

Street and Smith Corp.: They began
in the pulp business in reaction to the success of "Argosy" magazine,
considered to be the first pulp published. Therefore, in the early 1900s,
they created "sister" pulp magazines under the titles of "Popular" and
"People's". To separate themselves from the popularity of "Argosy"
magazine, they were the first to advertise their difference in having full
art covers, where "Argosy" had a large masthead with small artwork. Of all
the four publishers mentioned, Street and Smith used Wittmack most often
during the 20s and 30s because of his strong ability to create an
action-type cover to draw the viewer's imagination into an exciting story in
progress.

"People's" changed their name often,
attempting to create a greater reader circulation, and thus, from December
of 1921 thru November of 1922, they became known as the "People's Story
Magazine". They chose Wittmack to do all 24 of the covers, knowing his
talent was in the creation of drawing the viewer into the most exciting part
of the featured story for that particular issue. Other Street and Smith
pulps in which he created many covers during the 20s and 30s included
"Popular", "Complete Story", "Sea Stories", "Western Story", "High Spot"
and "Top Notch".